“I just prayed to God,” said Katie Hamilton, a woman much stronger and feistier than her delicate, demure looks and petite frame might indicate.

“We’ve lived in so many places and gotten past so many obstacles, and every time, God has planted us somewhere, giving us a present in life that we unwrap over and over again every day.”

Her prayers, she said, have brought husband Josh Hamilton, 31, the 2010 AL MVP and five-time All-Star slugger, from the Texas Rangers to the Angels this offseason on a five-year, $125 million deal.

So Katie, their four daughters – Julia (Shea), 11, Sierra, 7, Michaela Grace, 4, and Stella, 1 – and their longtime nanny/housekeeper, Lucia, are making the move to Southern California to be with Josh, to live with Josh, to cheer for Josh, to wake up and go to sleep and do everything outside of hopping in the batter’s box with Josh.

That’s because Josh, their ballplayer and recovering drug-addict husband and father depends on his family as a constant, as a fixture in his daily, well-structured, sober-living routine.

He relies on their love, attention and support in a life that can be so instantly imperiled by a single failure to resist temptation, to avoid the triggers and to deny dangerous impulses.

The family, which also plans to keep its Westlake, Texas, home and ranch, began househunting on Dec. 16 for an in-season residence in Orange County.

“We go where Josh goes,” Katie said. “It has been that way since the beginning, going from North Carolina to Florida, Cincinnati, Texas and now here. We’re all for some palm trees and water.”

Katie believes God has saved her husband, giving him the second, third, fourth and next chance to be not just a superstar ballplayer but a better man.

Her role is to try to understand and, at times, to forgive. She shows her faith the way her husband shows spectators his muscles and tattoos.

She has been by his side for his recovery, relapses and redemption, though she wasn’t there when his self-destruction first began.

Katie Chadwick knew Josh Hamilton from Athens Drive High School in Raleigh, N.C. But she didn’t know anything about baseball or the talent of Hamilton, who was drafted first overall in 1999 by the Tampa Bay Rays and received a $3.96 million signing bonus.

A 2001 car accident gave him a back injury and parked him on the disabled list, which provided the pain and time to spark a 4½-year drug and alcohol dependency.

By late 2001, he was addicted to whiskey and cocaine, blowing through his savings and spending as much as $100,000 in six weeks to keep his bad habit going.

In 2002, he tried cleaning up. A mutual friend communicated Josh’s interest in meeting Katie, who already had a 17-month old daughter, Julia Shea, from a previous relationship.

“When he walked through the door, I almost fell on the floor,” Katie recalled. “He has just grown up and I was like, ‘Hi!.’ We dated for a few months, broke up, got back together a year and a half later, and, after four months, were married in 2004.”

But Josh was still wrestling with his drug demons, relapsing with booze then crack until he hit rock bottom in 2005.

He failed two drug tests in five years and was placed on baseball’s restricted list from 2003 to 2005 before being reinstated in June 2006.

Katie, who had already given birth to their first child, Sierra, turned Josh away, reportedly filing a restraining order and begging him to get help.

Drug-addled, homeless, pale, gaunt and covered in 26 tattoos, he showed up at his grandmother’s house. He promised to get sober, to embrace Christianity and to redeem himself as a husband and father.

“God told me he was going to give Josh baseball back, but it wasn’t going to be for baseball. It was going to be for something much bigger,” Katie recalled about taking her husband back in 2005 and helping him restart his baseball career.

They had been married for two years before Katie saw Josh play baseball for the first time at a tournament in Florida. During batting practice, he hammered shots over the walls in all directions, leaving Katie “amazed” in the stands.

“If I had known he would have been throwing away that kind of talent, I would have had a harder time wrapping my head about what the addiction was doing to him,” she said.

“He is so talented and powerful but such a gentle human.”

During his Angels press conference, he smiled at Katie, hugged and kissed her, even handed her the microphone to answer a few questions. The day was so distant from those darker moments when Hamilton needed to salvage his career, his marriage and his life.

Waived by the Rays in 2006, Hamilton joined the Cincinnati Reds and made his major league debut on April 2, 2007. He was traded to the Rangers for 2008, his first of five consecutive All-Star seasons.

“I realized that I knew nothing about the sport, but I knew that Josh loved it,” Katie said. “So if he was going to play it, I was going to learn it. I love it now.”

It is divine intervention, she believes, that has brought Josh from being a Devil Ray to an Angel.

It is a higher power, she knows, that has saved her husband, her marriage and her family, strengthening her to be the rock behind the slugger who never wants to hit rock bottom again.

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